I am making a classic style Pilsner and was wondering how long I can lager the beer in the secondary fermenter and in the bottles?  Is two months in the secondary too long?  Should I condition it longer in the secondary or in the bottles?
Dave Wood
via email

I think this question probably will generate two very different answers depending upon who you ask. In this case you asked me and will get my take on it.  Let’s back up . . . why lager beer at all?  The most common reasons cited for lagering, or aging before serving, are diacetyl reduction, acetaldehyde reduction, clarification
and carbonation.
   
Some folks talk about flavor maturation, flavor mellowing and beer stabilization when they talk about lagering, but these are all different terms for the four objectives I cited. The only thing that should be performed before bottling is clarification, and this only needs to be done partially since yeast is needed for bottle conditioning and the bottle bottom serves reasonably well to keep yeast sediment out of the beer, provided that some care is exercised when moving bottles around and when the beer is poured.
   
I suggest fermenting your lager until the final gravity is stabilized and then allowing it to sit at the fermentation temperature for a few days to give the diacetyl and acetaldehyde reduction steps a solid head start, if not more than enough time to be complete. Move the beer to a cold place, such as a refrigerator or snow bank for about a week.  The cold temperature will knock a lot of the yeast out of solution and make racking easier prior to bottling. I then would rack, prime and bottle.
   
If you want to hold your Pilsner for a couple of months prior to drinking I would suggest the hold step after bottling because the bottle has everything you need for lagering; yeast, beer, fermentable sugars and a mechanism to hold the carbon dioxide in the container (the bottle cap). This is of course not traditional for lagers. Most lagers brewed in the old days, which is what brewers often reference when discussing “traditional” methods, were aged in large tanks or barrels and then moved into smaller barrels where they would be transported to the tavern for serving.